“Josie, thank you so much for what you guys do at Beautiful Depths! Your weekly podcast conversations and the blog posts help me so much. It’s such a blessing.”
Hearing these words from an acquaintance who follows our ministry here encouraged me, but also sent a pange of sadness to my heart.
“Do I tell her we might be walking away?” I thought.
We’ve taken a little break from this ministry over the past couple of months to pray and discern what God is asking of us. I was feeling uninspired due to overcommitments and no longer felt peace about this ministry, despite all the words of encouragement and feedback from our followers.
Our focus for Beautiful Depths has always been: If we can help at least one soul come to know and discover Christ in a deeper way, then it’s worth it.
So naturally, I pushed aside my feelings of discontent for months and powered through, fueled by the desire to bring Christ to each of you through this ministry.
Overwhelmed by a big transition and move and on the cusp of a new job in full-time ministry, I knew it was necessary to take a break from Beautiful Depths. In the back of my mind, I knew I needed some time to pray about where God was calling me to serve—because the truth is that I didn’t want to give myself partially to a lot of things, but to be able to give myself fully to the mission God was asking me to pursue. After sharing my heart with Samantha and Kaylee, we decided to take a break and pray about it, then come back together to make a decision.
It’s beautiful how the Holy Spirit will work in our hearts when we are open to Him and give Him permission to freely guide our thoughts and actions. After a two month break, we met as a ministry team and all said the same thing: We love this ministry and pridefully don’t want to let it go, but we feel God asking us to walk away. And strangely enough, we feel peace about it.
Still, it’s extremely hard for us to even write this final post to you guys. Why? Because you’re our people! We’ve poured our hearts out to you and journeyed with you each week, sharing our souls online so that we can help you take one step closer to Heaven. We don’t want you to think we’re walking away from you or don’t care anymore. We just realize that we have to practice what we’ve been preaching here for years: Holiness consists in abandoning ourselves completely to God, trusting that His will is our greatest good, even if isn’t what we may want.
So despite wanting to stubbornly hold onto this ministry because we love podcasting, we love serving you guys, and we love sharing Truth each week, we realize it would be a disservice to our vocations to continue giving ourselves here when we feel God asking us to surrender. All of that to say, we are saying farewell (for now…).
We don’t know what the future holds, but we must be faithful to what God is asking each of us in this moment. For me (Josie), that means serving my parish here in Jacksonville, FL, as the Co-Director of Discipleship and Evangelization, while pursuing my master’s in theology. For Samantha, that means leaning into her vocation as wife and expanding the new shop that she opened this fall: Bloom Design Studio. And for Kaylee, that means settling into her roles as wife and mother, while working two small businesses from home– being a Creighton Model FertilityCare Practitioner and sharing about overall wellness .
Maybe one day we will return and re-launch the podcast and blog, but for now, we are saying farewell. As we close this chapter, we want to leave you with a passage from Ecclesiastes that offers us great encouragement and confidence about this decision…
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. What do workers gain from their toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time.
—Ecclesiastes 3
Please know we have loved serving you these past 2.5 years and appreciate each and every one of you. We will still be around, so never hesitate to reach out to say hello anytime. Our podcasts and blogs will remain, so you can still access those. Additionally, we didn’t want to leave you without recommendations for other ministries to follow along with since you won’t be getting your Beautiful Depths fix each week. We can’t stress enough the importance of constantly nourishing our souls as we strive to love and serve God in our daily lives, so you can find those resources below!
We love y’all and will miss sharing our hearts with you each week! While you may not get an email in your inbox on Monday mornings anymore, we are still fighting the good fight right alongside you. 😉
From the depths of our souls,
Josie, Samantha, and Kaylee
Other Ministries to Follow:
